Objectives

The principal beneficiaries of the project are the following:

Regional Governments and policy makers. Education is one of the principal tools that governments should invest to foster the social and economic development of countries. Flexible education and training programmes are specially targeted at providing a chance to access education for people who do not have time to attend traditional classroom-based programmes due to distance or time constraints. All countries legislation has deployed specific laws to govern and organise the provision of Flexible Education and Training programmes. It is a goal of the project to provide such expertise to Southeast Asian Governments and local administrations for the benefit of widen the accessibility to education for the overall population.

Southeast Asian and EU educational authorities. The project will promote efforts to increase the mutual understanding of the e-learning and open distance learning models coming from Southeast Asian tradition and European tradition. Knowledge of the current state and future prospects of open distance and e-learning in the Southeast Asian area is, naturally, essential for any European player wishing to establish or develop ties with Asian partners. On the other hand, Southeast Asian education and training player will also acquire a better knowledge about the European open distance learning system. Through this project, the road will be paved for broader access by more EU partners in the virtual learning market in Southeast Asia, and contribute to closer EU-SEA cooperation in the future.

EU partners and SEAMEO and its members will obtain an insight and better understanding of how their respective educational models are similar, or differ. Special attention will be given to differences in terms of how target populations are identified, the learning habits, the role of learning materials, the tutoring action, the level of support (support centres, libraries, resource centres), student evaluation and assessment schemes, etc. All these elements need to be well understood in order to maximize the benefits and further enhance the cooperation. In addition, the project will increase the managerial and technical capability of SEA partners in the participating SEAMEO Centres in managing virtual learning system

EU and Southeast Asian students, by increasing the number and quality of learning programs, specially by being able to access courses and programs from the foreign regions (EU for Southeast Asians, and Southeast Asia for the Europeans).

Publications and other outputs

It is foreseen that each work package will end with the publication of a deliverable report or prototype, independent of the internal working papers that will be produced in the course of the work. The following table summarizes project deliverables:

The impact of the results of the project will be broadly disseminated through both, SEAMEO and ICDE structures.

The Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) has a network of all the ten Ministries of Education in Southeast Asia and fifteen Regional Centres devoted to the promotion of sustainable human resource development in the fields of science, health, agriculture, education, culture and the arts. The SEAMEO Website, publications and conferences organized annually by the Centres will be used to promote the project outcomes

The International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) facilitates and communicates leadership in the field of distance and virtual learning globally. Institutions from more than 140 countries are members of ICDE. Through its many conferences, seminars and meetings, ICDE represents a premier forum for debate, knowledge and experience sharing and networking of peer capability, the ICDE is pivotal in bringing together the world of distance education and virtual learning. The results of this project will be easily spread out through the ICDE’s network of institutions, national and regional associations. In this context, in 2003 special sessions will be organised at the ICDE Standing Conference of Presidents (a unique forum of policy level decision-makers) and at the 21st ICDE World Conference on Distance and Virtual Learning (Hong Kong, China). Both events offer extraordinary opportunities for exploring further partnerships and strategic co-operation with institutions, governmental agencies, organisations and professionals from all over the world. On top of that, other activities related to the dissemination of the outcomes of this proposal will be organised in conjunction with the regional meetings of ICDE in Asia, Europe, Oceania and Latin America.

Due to the fact that in the context of the project there will be no time to put in practise project findings, and therefore no time to develop a specific learning material, actual comparison between project-compliant programs and non-project programs will not be feasible. For that purpose it is foreseen to get assessment and feedback for project results from the following sources:

In addition to that, and after Consortium partners have developed a number of joint lifelong learning programs, a comparison will be developed in order to see the acceptance of the new programs by the target learning citizens, and get feedback in order to refine the methodologies.

The Consortium expects that an evaluation strategy based on publishing working papers on the Internet and presenting them in key events will contribute to the public awareness of the project and project results.

financial sustainability

This pilot project is the first phase of a more ambitious programme to re-design a flexible virtual learning model applicable to Southeast Asian countries, including the development of a virtual platform. This virtual learning model will improve significantly the accessibility to and the quality of lifelong learning, will promote the concept of learning communities, and will provide quality standards and assurance.

The SEAMEO has already agreed upon an IT Development Plan which places great emphasis on the implementation of the Virtual Campus Environment in stages to all its centres, and guarantees the commitment of SEAMEO Centres and to a certain extend, the Ministries of Education of SEAMEO Member Countries in their support towards the further development of Virtual Learning in this region.

The contribution of the host governments of SEAMEO Centres are regularly used to support human resources development programmes and serious efforts are already been undertaken by a number of these centres to look at Virtual Delivery options for their ongoing programmes. Thus, this represents a continuous source of funds from which efforts towards the development of the Virtual Learning environment can be expanded.

institutional sustainability

By creating a strong foothold in Southeast Asian countries in distance and e-learning, the project aims at considerable partnership development in the future between EU and Southeast Asian institutions and organisations. In the long term, the objective is the deployment of a Virtual Platform for open and distance teaching and learning, capable to support all the activities of a distance teaching operator, based on the solutions/products already available in the market or owned by the project partners.

SEAMEO as the permanent cooperation platform for the Ministers of Education of the Southeast Asian region has already assumed an institutional commitment through its IT Development Plan to facilitate the creation of an e-learning environment to enhance SEAMEO Member Countries education’s quality and competitiveness and hence, to reinforce the capacity building of its citizens.

At the same time, another challenge for this proposal is to strengthen the participation of the Asian experts at European research on IT solutions for ODL. ICDE, as the global umbrella of distance and virtual learning institutions and organisations, will facilitate the mechanisms of its vast network to sustain the collaborative efforts been currently done in this proposal to disseminate the outcomes and generate new opportunities for other institutions in similar situations. In this context further co-operation actions for the future will be defined in the Seminar to take place at the end of the WP3, including the participation of Southeast Asian partners in the next Six Research and Technology Development Framework Programme.

Sustainability at the policy level

At policy level, as SEAMEO is the Organization under the Ministers of Education, it can guarantee the long-term investment in e-learning. All SEAMEO members and units are well aware of the need to integrate IT&C into every sphere of learning activities, especially in classroom teaching in the virtual and distance learning environments. The SEAMEO IT Development Plan places a great emphasis on the implementation of the Virtual Campus Environment in stages to all its centres and guarantees the commitment of SEAMEO Centres and the Ministries of Education of SEAMEO Member Countries in their support towards the further development of Virtual Learning in this region.

A number of modules related to tools used for the delivery of virtual learning modules are already part of the institutionalised training programmes of a number of SEAMEO Centres such as SEAMEO SEAMOLEC and SEAMEO VOCTECH, thus assuring the continued support of these centres in the development of the human resource capacity in this region.